To quothe from another slashdot reader:"The FAA has spotted an unusual number of pigs at high altitude, the devil called me up asking to send him a jacket and gloves, a cow was seen in the night sky above the moon......."

Madness! I'm going to go make myself a tinfoil suit - the END IS COMING THE END IS COMING!!! SAVE YOURSELF!!! OMG,IT CANT BE.. DUKE NUKEM FOREVER!!

I didn't say they committed an offense by way of not doing a Linux version- not once in that message.

(Next time read the message more carefully before commenting...)

I just really don't have a desire to buy software for anything other than Linux. Now, as far as Loki's demise, it had less to do with a lack of market and more to do with pure mis-management (I know a lot of the goings on there while they were still in business- I've got more than a couple of online acquaintances that worked there and they said all kinds of things that map back to what's been said, etc.). Now, what I am saying is offensive is that they're suing the bnetd people, claiming infringement, etc.

That's bogus, they know it, but since they've got money and lawyers, they're going to try and beat down the little guy anyway. THAT is what I definitely won't be doing- paying for a corporate bully. I don't buy/use Disney stuff for the same reason.

"Second, and more importantly, maybe YOU don't take boycotts seriously, but many others do."

Har har har. If by "many others" you mean "extreme minority", then you are right. Most people here on slashdot are blow-hards that sacrifice their ideology as soon as the new cool gadget from comes out. Quit being so naive.

We have seen this with this *AA's and Taco posting about some new cool DVD that is out.

Yeah, TACO is posting about it, not Michael, who's the one who typically posts about the latest adventures of the **AA's. Why should the editors be held to ideological consistency between each other?

And since when does realism mean "screw your ideals"? I don't HONESTLY think that Blizzard will personally miss my money. I'm not doing it for the actual economic benefit, I'm doing it because I think it's wrong to support them. If others agree, and they lose money because of it, great. If not, at least I'll have done what I believe is the Right Thing.

"Why should the editors be held to ideological consistency between each other?"

And why should the slashdot population? You keep proving my point: Hardly no one on slashdot partakes in these silly boycotts.

"And since when does realism mean "screw your ideals"?"

Realism is that the vast majority of slashdot users don't share the ideology that this particular game maker should be boycotted, which proves the point that not many people here care about the boycott.

"I don't HONESTLY think that Blizzard will personally miss my money."

Of course they don't care about your money; You represent a minority market.

"I'm not doing it for the actual economic benefit, I'm doing it because I think it's wrong to support them."

More power to you. Virtually no one else is partaking in the boycott, which makes the boycott useless.

"If others agree, and they lose money because of it, great"

Not many people do. They won't lose enough money to make the silly boycott worth the effort of the majority of slashdot.

As if you could EVER get 100% of readers (hell, even 85%) to agree on anything?

Sadly, you're right. One could say, for example, "the sun is yellow", and:54% would agree with you.27% will say the sun may be yellow in America, but the rest of the world things it's more orangish10% will flame the above 27% by saying "America != USA"35% will ask about whether the sun shines on Linux88% will complain that these numbers don't add up to 100%.

Of course, the Sun is actually white, almost by definition. People think it's yellow because they usually see it when it's low in the sky near the horizon, which causes its color to be significantly reddened [aspsky.org] by its long path length through the gas and dust of our atmosphere.

Except it's usually Michael who post about the **AA's and Taco that drools over stupid new Disney DVDs.

Why should the editors have to be ideologically consistant between each other?

So yeah, Michael can be very "Chicken Little" sometimes (the sky is falling!), and Taco's a fucking whore for Disney, and in turn the **AA's, but they doesn't mean they have to agree between the two of them.:)

"Why should the editors have to be ideologically consistant between each other?"

Doesn't that prove my point? Isn't an effective boycott on slashdot one that has many people commited to it? My point is that the majority of people on slashdot DO NOT CARE about the silly boycotts. The ones that do commit themselves to a boycott here on slashdot is extremely small, and inneffective. Using your quote, wouldn't it be accurate to say "Why should slashdot users have to be ideologically consistant between eachother?". I'll answer that: If they aren't, then a boycott doesn't do shit. Which proves my point. I'm glad you think my way after all.

And just what do import Anime disks have to do with the MPAA. For example the MPAA gets *nothing* when I buy something that is not produced by a member. No one said you should not buy DVDs it is DVDs from MPAA members that you should not buy.

Say what you like about Blizzard, they make some pretty damn good games.

Indeed. I've been a fan of the entire Warcraft series, and I still play Starcraft, oh, twice per week, with a few friends.

Sure, they sued the bnetd guys. Big deal. BattleNet is FREE. It may be laggy, at times, but, overall, it's a good service, and there's really not much of a reason to spend the time reverse engineering the protocol and writing a new server for it.

Oh, but, wait! BattleNet checks keys! Maybe bnetd was invented so people with pirated copies of the game could play it without being hassled by the BattleNet servers?!

Support great software. If it happens to not be free, so what? Buy it.

> Maybe bnetd was invented so people with pirated copies of the game could play it

Or maybe not. Maybe it was invented casue BattleNet sucks ass. Maybe it was invented because we live in whats called 'a market' where people are encouraged to supply a demand. Sure, it doesn't check keys. Is ID software going out of business? Nope. Hell, gamespy.com owes their entire business to ID (and arguably to the pirated game market.) and nobody's firing off intimidating letters to them.

So can you explain to me why Blizzard wouldn't just do a key check in the game client against a blizzard-owned key database, independant of server-finding mechanism? Can you tell me why they insist that it takes a full blown player-community environment to do a simple key check? Sounds to me like, if anything, Blizzard made a crucial architectural mistake, and now they're being forced to toss out all babies with their bathwater. Thats their own deserts, and I dont have a modicum of sympathy for them. They arnt in any danger of living on the streets, and to use the argument always used against those who have to endure tough situations, if they like what they do, why grub for every last penny?

Blizzard's most likely simply bothered by the fact that the existence of bnetd decreases the intrinsic value of Battle.Net. Perhaps they have/had some plans in the wings to move Battle.Net over to a for-pay service; if they only allow their games to talk to *their* community (Battle.Net), then they've got a clear, guaranteed way to at least make some money.

Bnetd sort of short-circuits this plan, as whoops, all of a sudden anyone can create a Battle.Net type server. As a result, any revenue-generating potential Battle.Net had is significantly decreased.

The DMCA/piracy argument is merely being used as the most politically expedient way for them to eliminate what they see as a threat to their earnings potential. If they'd come out with a 'hey, this *totally* wrecks the Big Plans we had for Battle.Net!' argument, they'd have been laughed right out of court. Much easier to transform it into a piracy-based argument, especially since that seems to be a hot political topic at the moment.

Oh, but, wait! BattleNet checks keys! Maybe bnetd was invented so people with pirated copies of the game could play it without being hassled by the BattleNet servers?!

Have you spent any time at the bnetd.org site? Read about the conversations bnetd tried to have with Blizzard about incorporating a method by which to authenticate CDs? Read about how Blizzard said, "Nuh uh" and then sued bnetd?

Apparently not.

But lets look at all the games that have suffered by not having centralized key authentication systems that require the key for play (and I'm just going to list the ones I've owned and played in multiplayer):

Well, there are more, but that's 18 games right there that didn't bankrupt their creators by allowing people to run servers at a LAN party. Admittedly, you can't set up public servers with Midtown Madness, but you can with the rest.

So what's keeping Blizzard from allowing people to set up their own servers? It must be assumed that people with pirated copies of the above games connect to public servers and play. Why hasn't there been a collapse of the game industry as a result?

... Maybe because enough legitimate copies are sold regardless to support those companies and that the extra sales due to widespread adoption of the multiplayer aspect makes up for the small losses to piracy. This is similar to Microsoft's approach - they hate piracy, but they know that without it, they'd be on a LOT fewer desktops. That's why the XP SP1 will merely disable future updates and won't shut down the OS itself - they can't afford to lose the numbers of users who have pirated XP.

Is Blizzard/Vivendi the first company to sue over server emulators? Naw, Ultima Online did the same thing. But I had already quit by the time that happened, so I didn't have much weight behind my protests.

Well, there are more, but that's 18 games right there that didn't bankrupt their creators by allowing people to run servers at a LAN party.

Well, actually, Dynamix *did* go bankrupt, partly due to the fact that virtually no-one actually bought Tribes 1. Why? Because people didn't need CD checks to play online, so they just warez'd it and played.

I remember talking to one of the ex-Dynamix staff, and they were saying that the figures for pirated people playing through their master server vs legal copies was something like 15-to-1.

Also, quite a few titles in that list *do* have centralised key auth'ing systems. Half-Life has WONID's based off serials, Tribes 2 did, Quake 3 did, and MoH:AA did. I don't think you can seriously count Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, since they were pre-internet gaming.

So before you go "Hey, it's not going to bankrupt them", it does.

(and as a side note: I'm going against the flow and supporting Blizzard here. It doesn't matter if bnetd heals a dying swan and fixes every bug in the game, it still gets around CD protection.

While that might be fine for the "Any use of the DMCA is evil, even if it means shooting off our feet"/. crowd, I don't think Blizzard is too happy about losing 90% of their sales (assuming WC3 gets pirated at 2/3'rds the rate of the Dynamix figures) so that Joe Slashdot can meet up with his friends in an empty room rather than in Battle.Net.)

Maybe bnetd was invented so people with pirated copies of the game could play it without being hassled by the BattleNet servers?!

You mean people who posses unauthorised copies of the game. "Piracy" has to do with armed theft of tangable goods (often involving murder, rape, and other nasty business). It has nothing whatsoever to do with sharing fun or useful software with your friends.

There is nothing morally wrong with this activity in and of itself, only the economic argument that some unpaid copies might have been paid copies otherwise. The moral argument is on the other side, where I'm forced to refuse to help to a friend or neighbor when asked, just so someone else can make economic gain off of them. I don't say this as a hypocritical lawbreaker, but as someone who actually tries to comply with the law, and is sick of constantly annoying friends and family members to do so.

The reality of the situation doesn't look so cut-and-dried to most people. How many people do you know who've never in their life copied or lent a game, CD, album, book, or video or audio tape to a friend? None for me. So the media companies try to brainwash us into thinking its some horrible criminal act to share media by using words like "theft", "property" and "piracy". Please don't support the media companies attempts to braiwash the public with inappropriate terminology. They have enough money to do it all by themselves without our help.

No less authority than Radio Hanoi said so, in fact. My carrier (USS Midway CV-41) helped evacuate Saigon as it was falling in April 1975. Many helicopters landed on us with evacuees, and we later picked up many planes flown out to Thailand. Radio Hanoi said these planes and helicopters were legitimate war booty, and they wanted them back. Since we refused, we were nothing but a bunch of pirates. Our captain flew the Jolly Roger in acknowledgement.

To get serial for a moment, complaining about the new meaning of "piracy" is about as useful as complaining of "hacker" being abused by the press. Words mean what people want them to mean (c.f. Humpty Dumpty), meanings change over time and by region, and it does no good to get snippety about it.

doesn't mean the government must morally give me or you or the ditch diggers monopolies to guarantee it." How did monopolies work into this?

I see a fair bit of explanation is in order.

Copyright is the grant of a monopoly (that's where the word comes in) on copying of a work to one party. Copyright monopolies were orignally a revenue source for the british crown (they were sold). They were kept in the US constitution as an *option* for congress, as long as they were for a limited time and were used to promote the arts. The idea was that congress could earn some extra money by selling on a case-by-case basis publishing rights for a short period to popular works that wouldn't get printed by anyone otherwise (printing was very expensive back then). They were not intended to imply any kind of "ownership" over the work itself, and the current situation would have absolutely appalled the authors of the constitution.

It is interesting that people boycotted Adobe when Adobe raised DMCA issues. In my opinion Adobe had a pretty valid argument too. In the case with Blizzard and BNETD, Blizzard is reaching pretty far into fantasy to support their claims and people don't really care because Blizzard games are cool. Let this be a lesson for those opposed to free software. As long as you make something that is cool then you can stomp on the rights of others.

In a video interview with Bill Roper (the guy in charge of Blizzard), he said that they have not started work on Starcraft 2, but they would love to do more games in that universe. He also said that when Warcraft III is complete it would be one of their ideas for things to do next. Personally, I can't really see what they would do next if not this. . .

Call me silly but I choose not to play it because it won't run on my computer. It requires Doors or something like that.

Honestly though the only computer I have powerful enough to run it has never had Windows installed on it. My laptop has no hope of being able to play games (without branding the HP logo on my legs.) That in combination with confusing legal moves, I have mixed emotions about it.

I think it's also Mac compatible - I'm not planning on getting it myself just yet (I'm playing Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past! Weeee!), but I believe it's a PC/Mac hybrid. (Good lord - I just had an image of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates making out. Ew! Gross myself out! Ewww!)

Please consider the fact that Blizzard is suing people who write software to interoperate with theirs when deciding whether you want to purchase this game
because nono of us buy games to actually play them, right?

Also, the collector's edition includes the soundtrack (now on a separate disk), a coffee table book, 4 lithographs(?) (probably the 4 different covers of the game) and something else. In all, the collector's edition is well worth the price.

Things are not "worth" what you put into them. That is a well established economical fact. If you put 1 million into a software project, the results will not be "worth" 1 million. The real "worth" of all the stuff in the box is how much people are ready to pay for it. If Blizzard can't find custumers who are ready to pay more than 10$ for the package, the the package is only worth 10 dollars.

"Don't support Blizzard's dirty tactics, download the game on your
local p2p network !"

That's especially ironic, given that the Blizzard tactics seemed to nicely coincide with massive piracy of the Warcraft III beta. They went after bnetd during a period where it seemed like quite a few people were using it primarily for its lack of a CD key check (as opposed to its legitimate usage as a means of creating alternative online gaming communities with better performance).

Who cares if they're suing people. I'm sorry, just because they don't exactly follow the mores of the Slashdot Community, doesn't make them evil. Certain things are forgivable when you makes games as well as they do.

And the gameplay isn't a heck of a lot different than Warcraft 2. You now have heroes, which are pretty cool, and you can queue your production. You can set a rallying point that new units will move to automatically. But the basics of building as much as you can as fast as you can still stand.

Grpahics aren't everything. Whilst Dungeon Siege is a good game, it lacks the balance that you find in Blizzard games. Like comparing AoE to Starcraft; the latter was far more well designed. And, of course, the story in DS isn't really much more than an excuse to descend through lots of dungeons and catacombs ("Nah, the road is block to that place - looks like you'll have to go through one 'o 'em dungeons to get to where you want to go").

Don't get me wrong; I like DS, but it seems to me that Warcraft 3 will be a lot better in terms of playability. Remember that Blizzard rarely (never?) make a cutting edge game - they stand out because of balance and gameplay, rather than graphics. Although at the end of the day I guess it's just a matter of taste.

Blizzard is exercising its right to not allow anybody except for Blizzard to use the gaming technology that it built! Panic, panic, boycott, boycott!

I think Michael is forgetting one crucial bit of information -- BLIZZARD GAMES ARE NOT OPEN SOURCE. Blizzard built it, people play it; Blizzard has the legal right to choose who they allow to interact with their game at any level. Not to say that interop software would be a bad thing -- id Software and Valve have proven that a game or gaming engine's longevity is closely tied to how accessable it is to the modding community. But if Blizzard has no desire to venture down that path, so be it.

Blizzard makes good games, period. If you don't want to buy them, that's your beef. But don't try to turn this into an open-source crusade -- you're wrong, they're right, end of story. Deal with it.

Given your opinion on this matter I would assume that you also believe:

(1) AOL should be allowed to cut off clone AIM clients because its THEIR network.

(2) MS should be allowed to cut off clone IM clients because its THEIR network.

(3) MS should be allowed to modify Exchange server to keep the Ximian connector from functioning.

(4) ISPs should start banning the use of Linux because its THEIR network.

Look pal I know my comments here are coming off as krass and I understand how you feel in regards to/. editors and the panic button of theirs, but just consider that for one minute they actually may have a good point here, okay?

Of/. is going to handle this in the wrong way as has been demonstrated by all of the "Im going to steal WC3" comments. The reason Blizzard is concerned about BnetD is because it makes piracy that much easier (you cant really play pirated versions of their games on the real Battle.NET).

Its going to end up just like the DeCSS thing were/. screams to high heaven about the poor 16 year who wrote the thing getting locked up - yet Taco is still more than happy to almost single handedly run AnimeFu - a site devoted to Anime on DVD (my my isn't he in serious need of a life?)

The hypocricsy has always been here and it will continue to stay here until the day these baboons close up shop. But until that time - I suggest you either learn to live with it (as I have) or leave well enough alone.

1 & 2 - not likely to happen because of public backlash. AIM actually has 2 protocols, a limited "open" protocol for 3rd parties to use, and the standard protocol, which they change frequently to break 3rd party clients.

3 - I wouldn't doubt that they would. And they are within their rights to do so. The only problem would be getting people to upgrade when most MS admins have trouble installing a security fix. Not to mention it would probably require changes to the client.

4 - AOL has banned the use of Linux (by simply not providing a linux client). It's their network, they can control how, when, where, and with what you can access it.

bnetd is a totally different issue. The use of the DMCA is quite different from a technological barrier or a restrictive ToS.

It is not in the Open Source community's best interest to try to strongarm or coerce companies to open their source (or to allow interoperability, or any other changes to their business model).

Blizzard (through Vivendi) is accountable to its shareholders. This means, as a corporation, they are legally obligated to protect their property and assets, and also obligated to select a tested, proven business model which represents a minimal risk and maximal chance of profit.

If you think Open Source is ALWAYS better than Proprietary, then why the hell is Blizzard's software so fucking good? Now that they've proven you wrong, the only way you can rectify the situation is by boycotting the software.

Great software should thrive. Blizzard makes great software. And they have the right to keep their systems open or closed as they see fit. Would it be cool if there was an open version available? Yes. I know there are several open RTS systems under construction on Sourceforge. They don't attempt interoperability with BattleNet, so there is no legal issue. And guess what? THEY ALL SUCK! They all look like derivative, amateurish, sloppy game systems. They lack the Blizzard polish.

And if you're a RTS player who decides not to buy WCIII because of this issue, well then, it sucks to be you!

That's a nice little bogus viewpoint. Committing wrongs for free doesn't make them right... and would open up the door for companies funding neat little non-profits for mangling other companies. Hell, they're already willing to legally relocate to Bermuda to cut their taxes via some interesting financial manuevers...

Will I have more fun playing this game than I did and still do playing Starcraft or is it just prettier. I think Blizzard games are great but I think they're about due for a flop (not in sales, just in longevity). It's clear that this game will sell.

The above is all correct. I will add that the multiplayer is just plain boring. I gave up on it after about 15-20 games lasting about 20-30 minutes each (that is to completion, 4 player games). The worst thing is once you lose a partner you are dead, there is no way to defend against 2 peoples armies. Unless they have radically changed the gameplay in the last month it is a huge disappointment.

Oh and I would like to reinforce the point that the 3D engine has been completely useless in the beta maps. Not only is there no good camera control but there isn't any elevation in the beta maps so it is really still a 2D game.

And I haven't liked an RTS since Total Annihilation, mostly because it's the only one which got the interface right and had units which are reasonably intelligent in responding to the enemy without user intervention.

Just a heads up, I have been running the Warcraft III Beta under WineX [sf.net] now for months. It runs full speed (since the graphics use my X servers OpenGL driver), and is flawless as far as I can tell - mu ch better performance and compatability than Starcraft.

There are so many posts about how "i am going to get even by pirating the game"...

guys (or gals), please do not sink yourself to that level. While we agree on the fact that Blizzard sueing bnet.d is questionable (okay, dead wrong and full of malicious intent), we also all know that copyright infringement is wrong. not necessarily as wrong as MS and BSA make it appear to be, but still wrong non-the-less. copying their software will not make things any better. in the end they will just come back with the statistic and say -- look, of COURSE we need to take these legal actions.

the future rests in each of our hands (gosh that sounds lame), that may seem to be insignificant at first, but i really believe that it's an important responsibility.

Just go out and buy Neverwinter Nights (in a week or two when it hits stores) and forget all about WC3. If Blizzard's tactics don't appeal to you, support the competition instead! You get a great game, and that should make it a lot easier to let go of your pain and get on with your life.

If that doesn't smack of corporate calleousness I don't know what does.

I'm going to support the eff. I won't be buying Warcraft III. There are TONS of excellent games out there to buy folks, so if you support the eff, show it by not buying Warcraft III and spend your money on another game.

Right. I'm not going to buy it, and I'm not going to play it, partly because I don't want to, but mostly because I don't have a machine that can play it. Are we clear on that? I am not going to give Blizzard $55.

But given Blizzard's treatement of bnetd, I'm damn well going to download a warez rip of the information that comprises it (which to my Linux machines look like a bunch of gibberish). Because that will reduce Blizzard's bank balance by $55, right? I mean, it does actually remove money from their account and puts it in, er,/dev/null, doesn't it? Because making unauthorised copies costs money, right? Maybe if enough of us do this (be sure to delete the information then download it again and again) we can leave Blizzard owing several billion dollars to... err... wait... isn't there a flaw in this argument?

Please consider the fact that Blizzard is suing people who write software to interoperate with theirs when deciding whether you want to purchase this game.

Somehow I don't think that a game publisher needs to be held to quite the same interoperatibility standards as an operating systems publisher... because it's a game. Odds are, no matter how much they sue or how inoperable they are, they're not going to push all other games out of the market.

Am I going to buy it? I'll wait for the reviews on the single player campaign. I never liked warcraft I or II multiplayer - it seemed to be the simple art of running exploding suicide troops at the enemy.

Apple is running some dedicated pages to Warcraft III [apple.com] which will be Blizzard's first game simultaneously shipped for Mac OS X, Mac OS 9, and Windows on the same CD. Sorry Linux guys, you are going to have to boot into Windows or MacOS 9. I can't remember the last time a major gaming company released the Mac version of a game the same time they released the Windows version.

P.S. What another boycott? Jeez! If I followed all of these boycotts, I wouldn't be able to turn on my computer. Sorry guys, Blizzard supporting Mac at the same level of Windows is more important to me than open source game servers.

We've play Starcraft at work, with 2 legit copies (and 6 people play) with a Battlenet clone.

I know that the BN clones have offered to put the same security into their servers as Battlenet offers so that people can't pirate, but perhaps it's just not an option for Blizzard to give up that info, and then test BNetD (etc) to make sure they conform.

When Warcraft2 came out, Blizzard added the ability for multiple installs off one CD, as "spawns" so that several people could play the game at once. Was a great idea, as everyone who played it, bought it. Even the women in the office (they liked the voices of the peons, etc). I thought that that was pretty cool.

These lists can be made for almost any type of game-when something sells (FPS, RTS) people copy it, update it, and so forth. There really hasn't been any innovation in computer games in years, but that doesn't stop new games from being a lot of fun, nor old ones. I just can't stand it when people rant about gameplay being "old." Come up with a new idea yourself, see how easy it is.

after considering everything, I believe Blizzard is justified in suing BnetD, considering how bnetd opened the door to piracy of the beta versions of Warcraft III(because BnetD didn't authenticate whether or not the version was stolen or not). On the other hand, I think they should have done more to co-operate with the BnetD project leads, who would likely have jumped at the chance to give Blizzard a hand.

The lawsuit just seems like a miscalculation on blizzards part, and they can't easily retract something like that without losing some measure of credibility.

Then the whole free market system pretty much goes right down the drain. The only accountability will be to guberment regulations, and businesses can screw customers any which way they want because they know if they make an enticing product people will shell out the cash anyway. Use your brains before you go out buying things made by companies who sue your friends and peers for beating them at their own game. Feh. Fanboys.

I can't look into the exact details of the lawsuit since it's/.ed, but I think Blizzard is well within their rights to sue for this.

When Diablo came out, there was a lot of cheating going on. So much so that I didn't even bother playing online, there were too many PK's and people with hacked inventories and levels. Blizzard tried to fix that in Diablo II, but unfortunately my computer kept crashing whenever I played it online, so I was unable to verify it myself. But their solution to prevent hacking was partially handled by the servers, and partially by he clients. If they were to allow others to make their own versions of the Battle.net servers, then this level of protection from cheating would be gone. There could theoretically be cheats in these other versions, which in turn could lead to the same problems with cheating found in the original Diablo. Blizzard is probably afraid they would get blamed for this.

Also, if users log into an unauthorized Battle.net server, they could have "patches" downloaded to their computers which could theoretically wipe out their hard drives. I'm not saying that it is likely, but it is possible and Blizzard does not want that kind of risk associated with their products.

Besides, what exactly is the benefit of playing on a rogue server instead of one of the official Battle.net servers? Is it because people don't want to rely on Blizzard staying in business or keeping the service free? I admit I don't know the whole story behind it, but it seems pointless to me to work on an alternate battle.net server.

the tech economy's in the toilet. hardware is cheap as hell. pick up a GF4 Ti and an Athlon 2000+, build your own killer system for peanuts. check pricewatch [pricewatch.com] for deals. 8 mb graphics system. does Internet Reversi run on that?

Ya know, I'm getting sick of "oh quit whining and spend all your money. I'm rich, so it all seems cheap to me." When someone asks if it will run on xyz crappy system, they don't need to be told "You're stupid for even asking, you worthless moron."

2. it's questionable just how much they apply to traditional news outlets. Most newspapers and TV news shows are quite free with the editorializing, and usually far less honestly than above. And besides,

3. No specific course of action is advised by the comment. It's just an objective piece of information: a reminder that Blizzard is currently suing the authors of bnetd. Insofar as any product announcement implies an imperative to go out and buy the product (what, you think it's world news?) they are simply providing more information about the product - that the company making it is engaged in a lawsuit against open source developers.

Objective? On Slashdot? If you're looking for an objective report, maybe you should counsider other [abcnews.com] news [cnn.com] sources [msnbc.com]. But if you're just looking for news for nerds [slashdot.org], you're at the right place.

Blizzard isn't all that rich, in fact they don't even own themselves.They are owned by a larger company, a french company I believe. Blizzard does make a few of the most popular games, but that doesn't mean they are the most successful.Id is sucessful because of the work of one man, Carmack. Without him there would be no Doom and thus no Id. (Don't want to knock the artists, but they needed his engine) Quake was the first game where he didn't do all the work on the engine. So there is a large personal investment in the projects that Id does, while Blizzard is run by managers and lawyers. I'm sure that the programmers that worked at Blizzard would love to see bnetd succeed. Unlike at Id, the programmers can't speak their minds. While Id is one of the few successful gaming companies to realease the code to their old engines, Blizzard is still selling Diablo 1 in stores. Without an engine available for mass use.Blizzard is more hard core about protecting their property.BTW, a few thousand geeks boy-cotting this game won't do anything to the sales, they are expecting the mothers of the world to pick this up for their little johnny or jane to play. Blizzard games sell millions of copies.

And that was the point of mentioning Blizzard's efforts to shutdown bnetd.

Blizzard is pursuing a model where it won't matter if you've pirated the CD because in order to play the game you'll have to use their server. And in order to use their server, you'll have to pay.

The model goes like this:

Hype the game, sell a few CD's to early adopters.

Let them spawn copies and even pirate the CD's to build a user base and gain market share.

Issue a "mandatory" service pack update; can't play multiuser with other people until this update has been installed, make it automatic.

Those who paid for the game get it automatically, those who haven't can't get it without paying and can't play against people who

have paid until they get the update.

And this is why they've shut down bnetd; a server not controlled by Blizzard ruins this marketing plan.

I would not at all be surprised to find out that your illegal copy of the downloaded CD remains useful only if you never play online, and only if you never play Multiplayer with anyone else who's played on-line.

The first time you see the neat new features they're holding back to the "improved gameplay balance" update, you'll be buying a retail copy of the CD (which you'll already have a perfect copy of) just to get the serial number.

After all, we could consider WCIII to be the "now you must pay me" update to WCII, and you've already indicated your interest in playing, even though it hasn't even been released.